The Suite Spot (Beck Sisters #2)(40)

“The lager and green tea ale are probably the best I’ve ever made.”

“Better than Fish Brothers?”

“Feels like I got my mojo back,” he says as he watches me peel the foil away from the steaming cheesy dish. He looks down at his chili with a slight frown, and I hide a smile.

“Do you want to join us for dinner?”

“If you don’t mind.”

I meet his eyes. “If I minded, I wouldn’t have asked.”

Mason quickly returns the chili to the fridge, then takes a seat at the head of the table. Maisie holds up her drawing for him.

“Do you like my porcupine?”

“I’ve never seen a blue porcupine before,” he says.

“That’s because she lives in the ocean.”

“Can she breathe underwater?”

“Yes,” she says. “She wears a snorkel to swim down to her house.”

“Where’s her house?”

Maisie puts the paper down in front of Mason. “Can you draw it?”

As he picks up the crayon, I ask, “Are you planning to grow this brewery into a national brand?” I’m hoping the question will keep him from thinking too hard about what he’s doing.

“Nah.” He sketches a few crude lines. “Matt was the mastermind behind Fish Brothers becoming a household name. For me, it’s always been about the craft and the science.”

“Have you considered offering brewing classes?”

“Not really.”

“You could do a weeklong seminar,” I say, cutting the lasagna into squares. “Participants would take part in the brewing process and leave with a sample of the beer they made. If you offered the seminar only once a year, you’d sell out the minute the reservations became available, and you could feature the resulting beer as a limited release.”

“That’s a really great idea. How do you come up with this stuff?”

“I’m always thinking about it.” I bring the salad bowl to the table, then go back for the lasagna. “I mean, the point of hospitality is keeping your guests entertained, whether they’re family and friends or paying customers. The more activities we offer, the more likely it is they’ll return or tell other people.”

Mason puts down the crayon and slides the picture back to Maisie. Drawing is not one of his best skills, but the porcupine’s house bears a resemblance to a pineapple—not unlike SpongeBob SquarePants’s house.

“A prickly porcupine should have a prickly house,” Mason says, making Maisie giggle. He looks at me. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“You just did.”

Mason plates the lasagna while I fill our individual bowls with salad, and we eat together. Like a family.

Stop it, Rachel.

Like friends.



* * *



The resort auction is scheduled early on Saturday morning—and I don’t want us to miss out on anything good—so we drop Maisie off at Avery’s house on Friday afternoon. On the ferry, Mason and I sit in the truck, listening to a podcast about hops.

“I had no idea there were so many varieties,” I say. “I thought hops were hops.”

“This is what makes brewing complicated and exciting. Every hop has a different flavor profile and there are so many other ingredients you can add during the process that will affect the outcome.”

“How do you know what to add?”

“Some things are traditional, and you learn as you go,” he says. “But mostly it’s about experimenting. There’s a brewery in Cleveland using seaweed from the northern coast of Ireland in one of their stouts, which lends a briny umami note to the beer, and I hate that I didn’t think of it first.”

“Do you experiment more now than when you were at Fish Brothers?”

“Definitely,” Mason says. “Busting out of the gate with our amber ale set the tone for the rest of our beers. We wanted to appeal to the masses, so I played it pretty safe. We did the things big breweries were doing, like a Mexican-style lager meant to be served with a lime wedge.”

He rolls his eyes, like maybe making that particular beer wasn’t completely his decision.

“Even the smallest breweries need some standard ales or lagers for people who aren’t interested in green tea or seaweed or fruit in their beers,” he says. “But without the pressure of a buying public, I can brew whatever I want.”

I tuck my legs up beneath me on the bench seat as I shift to face him. “How did your parents react when you told them you wanted to make beer for a living?”

“Growing up, I was the nerdy kid who—Okay, did you ever see the movie Up?”

“Yes.”

“Russell is basically nine-year-old me.”

“Aww, that’s so cute.”

“I was the kid who asked for a chemistry set for Christmas, won first-place ribbons at the science fair, and did not flinch when dissecting things in biology class. So I’m sure my parents assumed I’d pursue something STEM,” he says. “I’m not sure they’d have ever guessed fermentation science, but they’ve been surprisingly chill about it. Especially when I started getting good at it.”

The lake is shimmery and blue, and with the windows down we can hear the faint screams of roller coaster riders at Cedar Point. I fiddle with the fringe on the edge of the Mexican blanket.